An ambitious plan to link marine parks across a vast swathe of ocean -- whose surface area would equal that of the Moon -- is slowly coming together piece by piece, say conservationists.

Former international rugby league player turned environmentalist Kevin Iro is a driving force behind the part of the park that will encompass the Cook Islands -- a nation whose combined landmass is barely bigger than Washington DC.

"When I was a kid, this was all alive," said Iro, grimacing as he scooped up a lump of dead, grey coral while walking the white sands of a Cook Island beach in the Pacific.

"There were tracks in the coral and if you walked off them you could hear the coral crunching. Now there's no coral here, basically."

Puna said the commitment by the tiny nation of 15 islands was its major contribution "to the well-being of not only our peoples, but also of humanity".

Peter Seligmann, co-founder of green group Conservation International (CI), said the establishment of such a large marine park was a courageous move for the Cooks and placed the Pacific at the forefront of ocean conservation.

But to Seligmann the Cook Islands park, while welcome, is just a single piece of the jigsaw.

The American is working with Pacific island states to create a network of similar parks across the region to ensure one of the world's last pristine ocean ecosystems is managed sustainably.

The scale of the proposed network, dubbed the Pacific Oceanscape, is unprecedented -- a 40 million square kilometre area stretching from the Marshall Islands in the north almost to New Zealand in the south.

That's about eight percent of the world's surface area, almost four times larger than Europe and big enough to fit Australia in five times over. It's almost exactly the same size as the surface area of the Moon.

"What we are seeing is the largest conservation initiative in history," Seligmann told AFP. "Piece by piece, nation by nation, it's coming together. It's massive."

-- "The oceans are under siege" --

Kiribati and Tokelau have already joined the Cooks in declaring huge marine parks, while the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia has signalled its intention to declare a 1.4 million square kilometre reserve in the next few years.

Seligmann said members of the 15-nation Pacific Islands Forum, all of which have enormous marine territories, had unanimously backed the proposal and more reserves were in the pipeline.

"It's in the enlightened self interest of each of these nations, they're the beneficiaries," he said.

"The oceans are under siege. We have major fisheries under duress, coral bleaching due to the changing climate and acidification of the ocean.

"(For Pacific island states), it protects their resources, it gives them more revenues, more security and ties in with their history and culture."

The huge Pacific expanse is home to 60 percent of the world's tuna stocks and contains ecologically valuable seagrass beds and coral reefs that teem with sea life, whales, dolphins and seabirds.

The idea is not to ban commercial fishing or mineral exploration, but to ensure they are managed properly, Marea Hatziolos, the World Bank's senior coastal and marine specialist, explained.

She said that while trawlers would be barred from some core areas of high conservation value, zones would also be set aside for activities such as commercial fishing and tourism.

Most coral reefs are at risk unless climate change is drastically limitedPotsdam, Germany (SPX) Sep 18, 2012Only under a scenario with strong action on mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions and the assumption that corals can adapt at extremely rapid rates, could two thirds of them be safe, shows a study now published in Nature Climate Change. Otherwise all coral reefs are expected to be subject to severe degradation.
Coral reefs house almost a quarter of the species in the oceans and provide criti ... read more

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